


depth

by paintedviolet



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (sort of), F/F, F/M, Girls Like Girls au, Like in the video Finn is an absolute Dick, Motif and imagery heavy, alternative universe - college/university, sorry Finn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 19:12:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11065344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedviolet/pseuds/paintedviolet
Summary: She thinks of her readings at school; the words and stories she grew up with. Finn is no virtuous Othello: jealousy makes a fool of the noblest man, but Finn was just a fool for thinking Clarke’s heart could still have room for him.Maybe Clarke was, too, for believing the same. Once. The pool waits for her. All she needs to do is dive.





	depth

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Hayley Kiyoko's Girls Like Girls video. Clarke takes on the role of Sonya, Lexa the role of Coley, and Finn the role of Trenton. It's my interpretation, fit for Clarke's perspective on the events that unfold, so it's not always chronologically accurate and true to the video. But I did try to stick to it, as much as possible.  
> I also compiled a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/blxckwxves/playlist/0aEsbfbUr1leWyaES5NHwE) for it, which I recommend listening to alongside reading this fic.  
> Also, content warning: true to the video, there’s a little bit of groping involved. If you don’t want to read it, cut out the section starting from ‘Then her face stiffens…’ and ending at ‘“Fuck off, Finn!” she tries’.

She sits at the edge of the pool, shrouded in cool shadow. Knees tucked under her chin, toes just hovering above the blue. Not quite ready to dive in, obstructing herself from the cool relief. Instead, only her fingers lazily drift through the chlorine water. Looping patterns in infinity signs, allowing them to break and journey off but always return home; studying how the ripples spread out from the gentle motions that foretold them.

A bold smudge of paint adorns her index finger, still wet and fresh from her attempts to embellish her class assignment. When the water moves away from the streak, the paint follows, and a new image is created. Spreading out and swirling underneath waves Clarke makes, emerald filigree comes alive. Herself, alive.

Paint, pool. It’s the most alive she’s felt today.

The ripples are small, as are the waves. She lacks the courage to cause tides, though she knows she has the power. Her fingers plunge beneath the surface, more forceful strokes, to prove it to herself. See? She is the cause of change, and she will be changed by it. Just if she gives herself enough courage, to do the right thing.

She learned this at the tender age of 15 – she smiles at the memory swimming to the surface – after another elaborate prank was pulled off with major victories and minor consequences. She’d sulked in Principal Kane’s office, Lexa prim and perfect next to her as they’d waited to be reprimanded. The quiet certainty from the brunette had pulled out from within Clarke a self-assured smirk.

(It had been justified, she’d known. Nobody could humiliate her friend and get away with it. She still stands firmly by that.)

Kane hadn’t thought it was justified. “You’re – you’re such a force to be reckoned with, Clarke,” he’d sighed to her during their one-on-one talk. ( _He_ should’ve known; he was her mom’s new boyfriend.) For her part, Clarke had barely listened – until that bit. A hint of victory had been concealed behind the resignation, and she’d been eager to prise it free. “You can be a tsunami. There is so much within you. But that can be dangerous.”

He’d watched her, again, as if he hadn’t been for the past five minutes. Clarke had now stared back, defiant. “You’ve got to be careful.”

Lexa had told her later (with no sense of the wounded pride Kane had expected of her) that his metaphor had been incorrect. There was reason for this; Lexa was the poster child for ascribing to logic, even back then.

Before a tsunami, the brunette revealed, comes an earthquake. Yet Clarke was a force within herself, because of herself. Murphy’s humiliation of Wells could’ve been addressed a thousand different ways; Clarke had dealt with things her own way, because she could. Clarke wasn’t Clarke because of other people – she may be influenced by them, but not altered to the point of never again knowing who she was. She was Clarke because of herself.

(At the time, Clarke had gazed back at Lexa and wondered how someone so young could bear the truths of a world she seemed to understand so deeply.)

Her high school years she’d survived with a confidence she’d struggled to secure at first. Back home for the summer, back home with memories swilling around her like droplets coloured green, she wonders where it’s gone. If she can get it back somehow. Soon. She’d left for college almost shaking with it – now she’s grasping for it, blinded by suffocating complacency.

Learning the essence of confidence is clearly not the same as equipping it.

There isn’t much of a breeze this morning. Instead, the Californian summer offers blistering heat. She can feel herself burning. Clarke feels the blood boiling in her veins, sizzling the sweat on her forehead, under her arms, on the flesh of her chest. Quietly agitated – restless, but not yet listless – she tries to steady her mind by swirling patterns in the pool. Sapphire blue, emerald green. Beautiful colours. She wants to paint again.

She wants to paint. She wants to dive in. She wants to leave the stifling house, the stifling conversations with Finn. She wants to _leave_ , but everything around her seems to cry _not yet_. The time is not right. She is ready – almost.

Trees do not dance. There are no clouds to watch float by. Birds chirp idly, calling when they please and expecting nothing in return. She spies one, black feathers glossy in the sunlight; it just sits there, believing its beaconing cry needs only to be heard every once in a while. Out of this barricaded, prettily perfect expanse, where real life resumes, a siren wails an urgent cry – but it’s dream-like in interpretation. Distance counts for nothing.

She’d dive in, if she wasn’t waiting. Shrug off the layers restricting her, and take a plunge. But she’s waiting: squirming, knowing, waiting.

Finn yanks open the patio door and tumbles out of it. His feet flop ungracefully on the stones; the sound’s cushioned by the barrier of plants that guard her back. She doesn’t turn to look at him, keeps making pretty little motions. Life around her is as lethargic as before, and she is still mildly agitated by his presence – by _everything_ – whether he’s in close proximity or not.

Filigree fades. Off into the pool, out of reach. If she dived in, she’d get it back.

“When’s Lexa arriving?” he yawns. “I need to know when to put a shirt on.”

Her phone’s shaded by the parasol; she blindly grabs for it and taps onto the last message she read, just to check. She knows already, checks regardless.

“About twenty minutes, I think. She’s going to set off in ten.” A smile spreads on her face when she rereads the messages; Lexa’s dry wit will always be the best entertainment around.

“She biking again?”

She doesn’t know why Finn sounds surprised. She wants to shoot him a disparaging look, but she doesn’t feel compelled enough to look at him, either. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

He snorts derisively. “Does she know how hot it is today? Or did she forget to check the weather before she dragged her nose out of a book again?”

“ _Finn_ ,” she snaps irritably.

“Fine, whatever.” He yawns again. “I’m going to fetch my cigarettes. I’ll be right back.”

He doesn’t shut the patio door behind him. Letting all the cool air from the house softly flow towards Clarke. She doesn’t watch him leave, but she hears him start his truck, hears it groan on the way to his house. For a second, she wonders why he’s already here, when she remembers he slept over last night.

Days and nights blur into one in the summer. There’s a safe mundanity in it all – from the steps up the parkway of her childhood home, to the time she spends with Finn, to the feel of the patio backyard underneath her feet. Four walls, four sun loungers, and long nights of perhaps not caring as much as she should. Finn’s spent four nights of the week with her so far, and Clarke still can’t say whether it’s been a good week with him or not. Sometimes they have fun conversations; sometimes they have other types of fun. Other times they just sit in silence, bleary-eyed and shrouded in smoke. It’s then when the desperation grips her – the worry that her tide is not strong enough. This is not enough.

But it’s safe, she constantly tries to justify the banality with. It’s easy. Finn is a fun person, when he wants to be. He’s good with most of her friends. She loved him for the good heart he’d shown throughout their times growing up. Even if it’s mired by the pedestal he’d finished building during this first year of college (their first year distant, she thinks), Finn lets her avoid thinking for a while and sometimes that’s all she needs to get through the summer.

Well, she did once.

Sometimes, she thinks she’s cowardly. Where’s the headstrong Clarke her mom’s boyfriend used to lament, strutting through the hallways of the school corridors and running through the rooms of her home? Kane may like her now, but even he’s been watching her with trepidation these past few weeks. He can see it; so can everyone else.

Maybe he’s waiting for the earthquake. She’s waiting for her own courage.

Clarke remembers herself; remembers the time. She’s no use to anyone if she’s staring longingly out onto the water, and Lexa’s arriving soon. She quickly checks the time on her phone again, but she’s safe for a few more minutes.

When she drags her hands down her face, her nails come into contact with her sunglasses – sharp _rap_ s on the plastic. It helps her focus. She concentrates on the task she set out to complete before she’d become fascinated with the pool: get out all the loungers, and the barbecue. Clear the garden table, move the towels off the chairs. Make sure Fish’s bowls are full. Tidy up any shit Finn and his mates left lying around before her guests arrive. The most important part: find the alcohol. She shuts the patio door behind her as she goes, but the house is too warm now.

Simple tasks. Distracting. She doesn’t do any more than she needs to. She doesn’t change her bikini, or reapply any makeup. She’s comfortable like this – as comfortable as the heat can allow – and Lexa wouldn’t care if she’d just rolled out of bed to greet her.

Clarke would choose to reenergise her look had she got the time, but nonetheless, she doesn’t need to panic over it. Things are _comfortable_ with Lexa, when with Finn they are not – weak justifications of easiness be damned. Clarke can be every side of herself with Lexa, but with Finn she’s what Finn wants her to be.

Her time with Lexa is… purer. Taken for fact. Clarke doesn’t question it, just lets it live through her, lets it sustain her in these glaringly tedious days.

The growl of Finn’s truck demands her ears listen to his arrival. She’s finished retying her flannel around her waist when he blusters in, beer cans in hand and his pack of cigarettes in between his teeth. She jokingly references Gus Waters, but it goes unrecognised. If she recalls correctly, Finn was on his phone the entire time he watched _The Fault in our Stars_ with her. Of course he doesn’t get it.

(The only time he paid attention to her that night was when he could play the role of the dutiful boyfriend and fetch the tissues for her. Never mind the fact that they were studying at different universities and hadn’t seen each other in two months.

Their visits often go like that. Boring, until the sex happens. Or they attend a party; when Finn is laughing and joking with his college friends, she gets a glimpse of the boy she once adored.)

She just shrugs it off. She has to. She helps him with the beer cans, puts them in the cooler with the one or two glass bottles. Hopefully her high school friends will like cheap beer. They’re college students; it’s not like they can afford anything else.

Finn undoes his shirt again, billowing the cloth to create an air flow. Ties his long hair up into a man bun. Readies himself for the day, when she is ready for anything but.

“Did you leave the patio door open?” Finn asks. “It’s scorching.”

She can’t find it in her to protest her innocence. All she can do is watch her hands grow restless again. All she can do is wait.

* * *

 

Lexa’s arrival changes everything.

Her presence is announced by a quick text, sent off with all the fanfare that Lexa carries in her wake. (Tempered; insurmountable.) Clarke bounds over to the door, hears Lexa knock.

Three prim knocks that Clarke doesn’t let her finish. The door slides open on knock two.

Clarke’s characteristic smile bursts into life at the sight of her life-long best friend. Lexa’s responding smile is the perfect mixture of bashful and confident that the blonde has loved over her whole lifetime. Everything seems to slot into place when they’re reunited – hell, they don’t even have to be touching to know where they fit.

Though Lexa’s hug, like always, _is_ a reassurance. Even when the sun’s determined to melt the clothes off their tightly-pressed bodies. Clarke grins into the hug, wide and shameless, and knows Lexa can feel it. She can feel Lexa’s smile, too.

So what if it’s only been a week since she’s seen the brunette in the flesh? So what if Lexa’s presence in her life is as constant as it’s ever been? Comfort has to be sought from somewhere.

“I would say I have no idea how you’re wearing that many clothes…” Clarke starts when they break away from the hug. Her eyes are roaming down Lexa’s body – in a _friendly_ way, she reminds herself – and she raises an eyebrow at the outfit in question. The shorts are fine, passable, in this heat – but the denim jacket? With a thick patterned top underneath? _Really?_

Her teasing is expected, light and jokey rather than anything else. It’s far too much for Clarke to imagine herself wearing in this heat; she would surely die if it were her.

But this is Lexa. Puzzle pieces identical in nature would never fit so perfectly together.

“…But you know I run at a temperature closer to a cold-blooded animal,” the brunette finishes, reciting the opening line of the play they perform every summer with her usual dry delivery. The next line is all improvisation, however. “If I remember rightly, the whole purpose of today is to get me out of them.”

Both of Clarke’s eyebrows shoot up.

Lexa blanches.

“And into the pool,” she quickly adds. “Into the pool.”

The other girl chuckles. “Cute.” To reassure the startled doe in front of her, Clarke changes the subject. “You can put your backpack in my room if you want.”

“Thanks.” It’s muttered, though the underlying reprimand in the tone is more directed at Lexa herself than the smirking blonde behind her. After it comes a soft little smile, the one that tells Clarke her best friend is just as excited to be here as Clarke hoped she would be.

That’s a relief. Clarke’s going to need that comfort.

Lexa’s comfort has always been her priority, though.

Clarke steps to the side to allow Lexa in; as the brunette strides past, Finn’s pounding footsteps are unmistakeable. The blonde’s almost-permanent smile quickly fades when he greets Lexa with a quick tackle and a rub of his knuckles on her head. Lexa takes it in her stride, of course she does, but her jaw clenches and she quickly marches away. Clarke just stares, mouth open to protest with no sound coming out.

Finn seems untroubled by the adverse reaction of either girls, simply strolling into the kitchen without a second thought.

What was _that_ about? She watches him swagger off, frown tucked tightly into her features. That clear alpha-male behaviour was just… unnecessary. Something about it unnerves her, light shed on an unsightly truth she’s yet to uncover. But she has to tuck that information away for now. It’s not the right time.

She moves to close the door. But her palm rests on the sharp angle, just for a moment, just as she looks out onto the driveway. The yellow Hopper lies in her line of sight, glossy with cleanliness and unassumingly prominent. A habit Lexa had picked up long before their university demanded cheap transport, Clarke’s forever associated the sight of yellow bikes with her best friend. Lexa’s proud reminder upon purchasing the Hopper that the option was “financially, physically and environmentally superior to the car” still rings in her head every time the blonde catches sight of it.

Lexa _does_ have a point. Finn’s truck, dusty and bulky, looks drab in comparison. Overcompensating, maybe. It’s falling apart, too, and it’s costing him more than he’ll ever care to admit. (She _does_ listen to him, see?) Luckily for him – unluckily for the state of the Earth – he won’t ever have to worry about finding the funds to pay for it. Mommy and Daddy are happy to pay his way through life.

Clarke understands the complacency, hates it.

Pursing her lips, she shuts the door, hears the satisfying click. It’s something that takes away from the light unease that has already made a home in the lining of her stomach.

Further from the door, further from the woman in her room, the tighter the knots become. Perhaps that’s her own doing.

The light in the kitchen barely reaches most corners; rays enter through slits in the blinds. Not quite breaking through. She accepts the offered cigarette from Finn’s hand, and neither say anything. The heat stifles them. The heat stifles everything, except what is meant to grow.

Her eyes finally find Finn’s through the dim heat, the slice of his scrutiny muffled despite itself.

“What?” she asks.

He says nothing, just shrugs as he lights his cigarette. He’s lethargic. Nothing grows.

Lexa treads carefully into the kitchen, her shoulders still tense. Clarke spots the tension immediately; her hands itch.

Finn’s motion to her is automatic – she has a lighter in her hand now, using it to set the death stick between her fingers alight.  She doesn’t smoke, not really, except for a few here and there. (It’s Finn’s hobby more than anything.) Abby’s a surgeon; she’s inhaled the warnings long before she ever inhaled the smoke.

She’s far from the pool now. She drudges up the smoke into her lungs, and heaves a sigh as a matter of course.

“Put the killing thing in between your teeth, and let it do the killing,” Lexa notes as she halts in front of the two. Her jump up onto the countertop next to Clarke is graceful, a dive reversed. Buoyancy had to have a purpose, after all.

Clarke grins at the Gus Waters reference. For a woman who claimed to find the movie ostentatious, it certainly seems to have stuck with her.

“You’re playing with fire there, don’t you think?” Lexa continues. With it comes a squint, hesitation in unfocused eyes Clarke doesn’t expect, but will take with all of the brunette regardless.

A second of her own misplaced hesitation, and Clarke opens her mouth, lets contentment spill out in the air between them, into Lexa’s space. The smoke traces the slopes of the other girl’s face with the tips of its tendrils.

Smirk ready, bathing in smoke, Lexa’s shoulders relax. She makes no utterance of indignation.

Clarke half-wonders if she should have.

“I’m playing with smoke,” the blonde corrects. Her smile mirrors her best friend’s; satisfaction and comfort, traceable in the lines of their lips. They will not always taste of nicotine.

Finn watches on. He knows he’s been forgotten, and she knows too.

“Make it fire,” Lexa responds quietly. “Smoke’s… suffocating. Fire’s so much better.”

There’s a question waiting – a question the same shade as the green on Clarke’s index finger. The blonde can hear it, clear as anything. She takes the cigarette out of her mouth and gifts it to Lexa; plump lips enclose around claimed territory and Clarke watches it be taken away from her, watches it willingly.

The lighter sits between them, hands and cigarettes close enough to touch.

They are hands that have cared for life. Curled around buds and shoots, poured love into the soil and watched them grow. It’s been said Lexa’s mother could save plants on the verge of death; she used to say Clarke had the magic touch, too, like one of her own. Like Lexa.

The brunette has a row of potted plants she’s brought home with her from college. The blonde coaxes them into life with a paintbrush, and preserves them on a canvas.

So full of _life_. She wonders – what are they doing, sitting around, smoking Finn’s death sticks? They’re doing what they shouldn’t.

She wonders if the smoke ruins Lexa’s insides the same way it does Clarke’s. Then again, identical puzzle pieces would never fit so perfectly.

The smoke billowing around her makes it harder to surface out of treacle-like thoughts. But she blinks away the haze and the brunette’s head come into view, shapes sharper now she’s focused. She realises, a few seconds too late, that Lexa is trying to make conversation with Finn. It’s polite, measured conversation, out of consideration for his presence – but strained. From their rocky start during middle school, there’s certainly no love lost between them. Yet Lexa tries anyway.

Finn does not.

Clarke has been lucky enough to attend the same university as Lexa, though their proximity is not the same as it was in high school. Different subjects and different roommates make for entertaining stories during their regular coffee dates and meetups; there’s no need for intense catching up during the summer.

By comparison, Finn’s college is further away. He’s estranged from the rest of their childhood friends, and it works out well for all involved. His college life is largely unknown to even his girlfriend, but the blonde prefers it that way; he’s a different person, a better person, when he is away from her, away from the people of his old life – and most of the time, she doesn’t quite care enough to ask. He is mostly successful at forgetting her, and she him. Neither of them have shared concerns about this.

Finn is different, now. And so is she. Apart, alive. She can feel it; she can see it in the way he silently dreads every conversation with her best friend, the stark reminder of what he’s been leaving behind.

At Lexa’s politely probing enquiries, Finn weasels his way out of concrete answers about everything except his classes. Even then, his specifics are still succinct. He doesn’t ask about the brunette, or how she’s settling down, as though it would pain him. He crosses his arms and fights off an uneasy scowl making home in his cheeks. His puppy-boy charms are fading, the way light crosses a lived-in house to show its age, its wear, its tobacco stains.

Lexa manages to squeeze in anecdotes in between Finn’s lungfuls of self-destruction: his rhetorical questions are moulded into rhetoric Lexa can use to assemble a response; his thinly veiled self-absorption becomes a magic carpet flowing towards collective reflection. Finn doesn’t ask for details, but Lexa is working overtime in the intense heat, and the blonde knows her best friend shouldn’t have to. (She _hadn’t_ , with any of Clarke’s previous significant others.)

Suddenly, the blonde is overcome with impatience – more intense than earlier, more demanding. Her ansty mood blooms over her like a rash. She itches at her too-warm arms until she ejects herself from the countertop.

There’s nowhere to stub her cigarette out. Damn. She flies over to plastic packaging – it’s caught in limbo between the cupboard and the trash – and crushes any light in the stick until there’s only smoke. Smoke and ash.

Finn uses this opportunity to slink away. Saved by her, spared from a conversation he never wants. He’s gone before she even thinks to look.

All that’s left is the silence of the day, the air conditioning humming contentedly, and two pairs of lungs that rise and fall in time with each other.

Lexa gazes softly at Clarke. The regimented bands of sunbeams adorn the top of her head, bringing the detail of her braid to light.

The cigarette didn’t help, Clarke thinks.

She feels she should excuse Finn and the way he acts around Lexa – but what can she say? _Sorry he’s standoffish, even though I don’t really know why_? No good would come of it. Besides, by saying it out loud, she’d address just how pathetic their relationship has become – how much _less_ she has become, from holding onto someone she knows can’t help her, for the sake of familiarity. She reeks of desperation.

Lexa can tell what she wants to say in a single look. They’ve had conversations like this before, conversations about significant others that best friends are wont to have, and the brunette hasn’t judged her throughout the entire time they’ve admitted their thoughts. Finn is Clarke’s decision, and she will not encroach.

A conversation, all in a single look. Clarke can’t say she has the same sort of connection with many people in her life.

Her internal monologue means Lexa’s stubbed out her cigarette, rid the countertop of the packaging, and got herself a drink – all without Clarke registering the movements. Her best friend walks up to her, nudging her gently with her free hand; head jerking up, Clarke leaves a world of shameful self-reflection and sets her sights on the sea of green watching her calmly.

“You said something last night about offering an opinion on your art?” the taller girl enquires. A measured tone steadies Clarke as she adjusts to reality. “You could show me now, if you’d like.”

The blonde nods. “Right, yeah. Let’s do that while we still can.” She throws in a smirk for good measure. When the other four arrive, they’re going to have no chance whatsoever for peace.

Lexa’s shoulders relax. “Lead the way.”

* * *

 

She’s been able to talk to Lexa for most of the days of this fledgling summer, yet it’s never quite like seeing her best friend in person. Emojis and well-punctuated sentences are never the same to Clarke, not when she can see Lexa face to face. (Not when she can see her heart to heart.) The blonde works through touch, through presence; when a conversation is not quite enough, it takes its toll on her.

Overdramatic, she chastises herself. It’s not like she hasn’t met up with Lexa over the summer. Besides, she’s functioned fine without her before.

Still. She’s – glad. Always glad to have the brunette by her side. She always feels better for it. Always have, always will.

Yeah. She looks over at her best friend, shapes encasing a heart she knows so well. She’s glad.

If this were a phone call, for example, she wouldn’t be able to see Lexa as she is now: curled up something sweet, leaning into the corner of the bathroom. Legs up folded in themselves, head up high, serene concentration smoothing out the concern that previously rumpled the silk of her skin.

If this were a phone call, Clarke would not be able to see the way Lexa’s eyes light up with her laughter. Full moons turn to crescents, and there is still so much light emanating from her. She illuminates the bathroom in a honey-sweet glow. Even just a small response, a chuckle, dry and resigned at Clarke’s insistence that they should paint each other’s nails, illuminates the bathroom in a honey-sweet glow.

If this were a text, she would not be able to feel the gentle meeting of their hands. Lexa Woods, a warrior in and out of the classroom, has the most careful touch Clarke has ever experienced. Finn is rough; Bellamy’s hands are calloused, and Lincoln’s soft grip is an easily foiled ruse for the insurmountable strength he stores away. Lexa takes Clarke by surprise every time: one clench of the brunette’s biceps is enough to dispel any misconception of weakness – but it’s like Lexa takes extra care to convey her tenderness. It hides nothing; it is strong, and it soothes.

If this were a text, there would be no way for Clarke’s ears to receive the smooth tone of Lexa’s voice. She is freer around the blonde – her measured tone becomes so much more expressive with every passing minute. When her lips are not clamped shut with concentration – “I never fault it, but I was never brought up on fashion parades and make-up tutorials, Clarke” – they form words of memory, words of wit. An anecdote on a particularly amusing experience in the brunette’s Introduction to Politics class brings to life a world Clarke can only witness second-hand. Lexa’s sharp asides on the antics of her classmates rumble and fly low, while her impressions use an octave Clarke rarely hears outside of their personal conversations. The blonde wasn’t there for any of it, but she feels she could have been. She could paint it, paint it with the colours that burst through Lexa’s words. If this were a text, she would be forced to paint in monochrome.

But this is not a text, or a phone call. It’s not even a Skype call – though God knows why they’d even attempt to suffer through those when the brunette is only ten minutes away. No, this is the real thing.

‘Glad’ doesn’t quite cut it.

A natural lull in their conversation – they don’t feel stifled, they don’t feel the need to plug the gaps with words. They are content to just be.

Away from her uneasiness around her boyfriend, Clarke allows herself to be.

She watches as Lexa applies a rose pink varnish to her nails – she watches, and smiles, her grin tipped with the memories of their earlier fun.

There’s something freeing about being alone with Lexa – that, the blonde can certainly attest to. Lexa adjusts her hold on Clarke’s hand; simultaneous breathing. The brunette’s exhale is quieter. Clarke immerses herself in the sound, recalls the laughter she so loves that had bubbled out from the brunette’s lungs. Earlier times in the art room – _her_ art room.

The room interrupts the general overwhelming tidiness of the rest of the house; for clutter, Clarke puts most others to shame. But Abby reluctantly accepts it, knowing that, fundamentally, the room acts as a window into the life of her daughter.

The walls were painted white. She knows it, sometimes glimpses it, but Clarke can hardly see the ivory walls behind the masses of art Clarke has produced. These walls depict a lifetime, a progression, of finding her talent and expanding it, forever expanding on it. Save for a few key spectacles, spectators can trace Clarke’s artistic journey: from the moment they walk in, the journey is panoramic and all-consuming. Starting from the bundles of 3-year-old Clarke’s drawings plastered haphazardly to the wall; to colourings and paintings she took home from kindergarten; to weekly celebrations and reflections of the life around her as she grew up. On the wall opposite the door, she has tacked to the wall as many of her recent pictures as possible; having grown in size, it is impossible to fit all of them in the space provided – especially since the window, decorated with tissue paper she’s been playing around with recently, consumes a good portion of that section. But she manages, because she has to. This place is hers.

(If she could, Clarke would take the room with her to college. This art is hers; they are her.)

Her friends feature heavily – less so as time has gone on, but still dotted around here and there, in the form of face models and incomplete figures. Nature, though – nature makes its first appearance as a serious inspiration on the second section of wall after the door. From then on, she has shown her fascination for her environment with an increased experimentation of colours, shapes and representations.

And so her art expands: people become nature in the way an appreciation for life is so becoming of a person. She herself can see when she felt the most intensely: the art that corresponds is the most intense. Over in the far corner stalk snarling lions, with red mist swirling around their frames; the second wall displays charcoal crushed onto paper with no other purpose than to depict her darkest moments. More recently, an explosion of natural hues, building up to her depiction of loosely-formed emerald trees, outlines sinking into a richly brown background.

Dedication, Clarke knows, is the best tool an artist can use, and dedication is wonderfully cathartic.

Clarke’s progression of art is not linear. She has – _must_ – showcase her most important inspirations. Papers and canvases crowd round exhibitions painted directly onto walls; the walls become canvases themselves.

On the wall enclosing the door, a map. That particularly happy afternoon produced a mural of the ordered streets of her hometown, complete with the labelled locations of her friends’ childhood homes.

Desperate for self-validation at the age of 15, the colours of the bisexual pride flag have been flung across the second wall – a personal ‘fuck you’ to the one time her mom wasn’t prepared to accept how freely Clarke loved.

On the side of the room opposite the door, the art piece that clinched her art scholarship is proudly displayed in the middle. Post-apocalyptic, with the light and bright surface purposefully failing to hide the darker hues of what horrors Clarke hints will come.

The final wall, the smaller wall, holds a homage to the man Clarke lost. Decorated in blues never quite as bright as the colour of his eyes, she turns to him. She leans her back against her desk, with its mismatched tools dirtied with experience piled on top of each other, opened paints and half-done sketches sometimes directly adorned across its well-loved frame. She leans against her desk and studies her depiction of Jake to remind herself of the lessons he taught her.

The expression inside these walls is so essential to her nature that few people are welcome to witness it all. There are a few notable exceptions: four, to be exact. (Five, if her dad were still alive.) It means different things to all four of them, this art studio – something different still to Clarke.

Her mom took one look at the pink, purple and blue, and _understood._ The pride, the anger, the hurt. She’d understood, she’d learned – and then she was welcome again. Always has been since. This room is constant reminder of their journey, their relationship; a link between the two while Clarke is making her way through the world.

Raven and Octavia are two of the four people still alive who can coax her out of her darkest states. They know where to find her when she falls into those holes; they’ve spent more time in here for that same reason than Clarke would ever want them to. But she is indebted to them for it.

Lexa is the fourth. Different. Aside from Abby – who has free rein due to her motherly duties – Lexa is the only one who can enter the room without fear of consequence. Lexa’s never been an artist, but there’s something underlying in the way she treats this room as the sanctuary it is. Clarke realised long ago that maybe, Lexa benefits from its existence too. The blonde can hardly refuse her that.

Lexa knows her way around the room almost as well as Clarke. She’s been a crutch for the blonde for most of the worst times. (Only one time has she been the cause of it. They survived, of course, but any betrayal of Lexa’s will always cut deeper than the knives of others.)

Unlike Raven and Octavia, she’s privy to the brighter sides. She is the inspiration behind so many happier ones, better ones. Hues of green flash through everything Clarke paints – _forests_ of green, in some. Especially in the more recent ones, the emerald trees. Paintings have always been inspired by the brunette – inspired by conversations, books they’ve both read or events important to the both of them.

She is a constant in Clarke’s life. It would make sense, then, that she is a constant in Clarke’s mind, too.

On the other hand – the blonde suppresses a sigh – Finn doesn’t bother setting foot in there. He’s never expressed an interest. She’s not sure he ever has.

She can’t imagine ever asking him for moral support, or letting him view something so personal. That in itself tells her he doesn’t belong – at most, not like Lexa does. And still, she lets him stick around.

(What _is_ she doing with him?

In the present, the brunette finishes painting Clarke’s index nail. Eyes flicker up, cautious.

Blue eyes do not look back. Too caught in memories. Unsafe. Important.)

Lexa’s presence in the art room always has the effect of assuaging her fears about her art. Earlier was no different. Paints still out, they stepped inside, Lexa closing the door behind her – quietly, respectfully. Finn and the world outside, in that moment, did not exist. Clarke felt herself become energised.

Her hands were fidgeting again, nervous regardless of the brunette’s reassuring presence. But a quick tap on the back of her hand from Lexa stilled them.

Clarke held her breath. (Holds it now.) Got to work on the final, final touches. Paints and half-finished attempts pushed aside to make way for this assignment; an art folder fell to the floor. Lexa leant it against the leg of the desk, then roamed as she pleased, voice gentle and encouraging. At ease, she made Clarke at ease.

(In the present, the blonde’s breathing has quietly stalled.)

Maybe it was the rhythmic drumming of the brunette’s long fingers against folded arms. Maybe it was the melodic humming Lexa often let escape within these four walls, formed today as a ballad. Whatever it was, something changed.

(Maybe it’s just Lexa.)

Her assignment – regardless of how separate it was supposed to be – could have manifested as the pool, or the filigree decoration. Something beautiful, something previously untouchable. She’d had the idea of personal strength in mind when she’d first conceptualised it; strength, and achievement.

Now it was complete. Ready. Achieved. Her tutors, she hoped, would be impressed. Lexa certainly was.

(The latter matters most.

What is she _doing?_ )

It occurred to her, as she was placing the assignment out of the way, alone to dry, that Lexa easily fit the room. She belonged, too. The room belonged to her. In a different way to Clarke, yes, but it was hers. The door was always going to be open, ready to receive her pair of careful footsteps.

A petrifying thought – and natural. Petrifying, but expected. Almost comfortable – almost.

(Natural as the ripples.)

She wasn’t sure of its significance then – she felt the gravity, but she was no Newton; she couldn’t explain it – so she busied her mind with conversation. A newly agitated brain, always in need of expression.

If Lexa had noticed a change, she hadn’t publicised it. The blonde hoped she’d interpret it as the satisfaction of achievement, not… whatever it was she was really experiencing. Quick-witted, and rising to Clarke’s challenge, Lexa treated the change in demeanour as a matter of course, and the blonde was thankful for it.

(She could still chalk it up to satisfaction, if she were that desperate to stay in denial. But she’s submerged in her own realisation. She doesn’t want to find out the way out.)

Coloured tissue paper on the window filtered in the light as playful bragging turned into a gleeful paint fight. The world didn’t exist – it was just them, two girls colliding together through directly aimed globules of Clarke’s cheapest paints.

(Lexa’s eyes are still on her. Clarke’s still not looking.)

Coloured tissue paper filtered in pink and red light, but they could still see the green and blue of the paint. Clear as day. Both splattered with each other’s throws, each other’s stories on each other’s skin. As in real life, she muses; they complimented each other, grew on the other, as before as it was now, as now as it would be in the future. She saw it, their friendship as a continuum, bright and tumultuous and spotted with laughter tumbling from their lungs.

(The stars have looked down fondly on their behaviour for years now.)

Green and blue, green and blue; it mixed with the pink and the red coloured light streaming in the through the window. Droplets of paint trickled down the front of Lexa’s shirt, handprints of the sky decorating her arms. A smudge of the ocean adorned on her cheek. Clarke was no better off: her legs had leaves growing, some as small as dots, other giant fronds of foliage – a reminder of the life she was lucky to witness in front of her.

She can see the recreation in her mind’s eye: _Rose-Tinted Glasses Not Required. Oil on canvas. Clarke Griffin (2017)._ Their outlines are more rigid lines, mandatory forms of the outside world. But they’re distinctly paint where the paint hits. And where the paint hits, it explodes.

Swimming pool blue and filigree green, bursting into life. Clarke sees it now. She sees what’s been there all along; she sees just why she’s been running scared.

_Lexa._

Clarke looks up. Releases a long breath.

And that’s it, really. That’s all that happens. The ground does not fall away at her feet. It’s no light bulb moment, no sudden _Eureka!_ with the world snapping into place. It’s slow: the ripples, the calm, undulating water. It’s like going to the beach she’s visited all her life, only to find a treasure cove just around the corner.

That’s all it is.

Yet it is far too valuable to ever be understated.

 “Clarke?”

Lexa pulls her out of her thoughts. The brunette sits there as before, still in all her quiet glory – freshly showered, freshly concerned.

The blonde can’t possibly understand how she’d been so blind.

She sees the concern, flashes a reassuring smile at her best friend. But her eyes are instantly flickering way, down to the nails the brunette is perfectly painting; she misses any look Lexa gives her. She’s not sure she wants to see what it would be – if Lexa knows what’s gone on in her head. If Lexa knows she’s the reason.

Fingers itch to move. Agitation and apprehension crawl back in, demanding their right to settle next to the bewilderment building up in Clarke’s head.

Eyes flicker up to watch the concentration on the brunette’s face – her heart pounds. She’s so close.

Distance counts for everything.

* * *

 

The walls of her childhood home are used to quiet. Apart from the TV in the living room, and the sound of a conversation from the girls, the air is heavy with stillness, heavy with silence.

It doesn’t last long.

Clarke has very little time to wrap her head around her newfound realisation; dressed, hair drying in the heat, she suddenly becomes host to four more guests. She’s happy to receive them, yes – she envelopes Raven and Octavia in a group hug, and receives hugs from their significant others almost immediately – but her mind is on the girl still in her room, hastily finishing getting ready before she comes to greet their high school friendship group.

Finn greets Bellamy and Lincoln with the same overly manly gestures as always. She sees him transform right before her eyes: the Finn who tried to shrug his way out of conversation has melted away completely. Replaced by a more enigmatic version of himself, Clarke’s reminded of the Finn she knew in high school. Or something closer, anyway. The tobacco stains are unmistakeable.

Yet it makes her smile, the picture of Finn and their high school friends getting on well. It makes Finn’s presence more… manageable.

Lincoln, ever helpful, shuts the door behind them, prises the bag out of Octavia’s fingers, follows Finn’s directions to Abby’s and Kane’s bedroom and picks up Bellamy’s stuff along the way. Finn next directs Bellamy to the kitchen, where he can put their alcohol in the cooler. None of the girls have noticed. Still talking, feeling right at home.

As they talk, O fusses with the braid in Raven’s hair she’d done earlier, mouth moving a mile an hour regardless of her preoccupation. Raven just lets it happen, more than used to it by now. (Clarke wonders if Bellamy is too.)

Clarke is ecstatic to have them back, feeling like a part of her has come home too. But they notice how antsy she is – how she keeps looking not to Finn, but for Lexa – how her hands drum on her sides – her awkward chuckle when Octavia calls her childhood home her “loveshack” with Finn.

Is it possible to show just how conflicted she feels? How simultaneously right and wrong she feels? She didn’t think it was, but apparently she has.

Raven cocks her head as she watches Clarke, like the blonde is akin to an engineering problem she’s finding it difficult to sort out.

Please, not right now, Clarke thinks.

Lexa’s arrival is quiet – measured, insurmountable – but at last it happens, so thankfully Octavia and Raven are preoccupied once again. And so, too, is Clarke. She can’t stop looking at her. Her eyes are at the mercy of what life has set out for her; she follows life, and follows carers of life. Hands enclosed, around flower stems, potted plants – her eyes find forest green and her agitation amidst the calm grows.

Lexa. She says the name in her head like a thanksgiving. A prayer, perhaps. For what we are about to receive…

The smile Lexa gives Clarke is both an answer and a question – a reassurance, and the lingering curiosity. They are okay, but why does Clarke need that reassurance? Clarke’s responding smile gives nothing away, yet somehow shows everything Lexa needed to see – if the way she nods quietly and throws herself into greeting their high school friends is any indication.

Their two friends don’t mind that Lexa’s hair is still wet, framing that sharply defined face. (Neither does Clarke.) They are here, they are together, and in the midst of a silent hurricane. At least that’s one thing to latch onto.

When Raven and Octavia break away from Lexa, Clarke’s arm finds itself wrapped around her best friend almost immediately. Lexa leans into it. Not obviously; no one hears the almost imperceptible sigh released hand in hand with the almost imperceptible gesture. No one but Clarke.

She can’t quite decode it. Strange. Roots in their always-exhalations, the sighs of comfort present in their shared presence – but with touches of something new. Quieter, an unwitting broadcast of the quiet from which it came. But Clarke’s so fine-tuned to their nuances that any change is noticeable, unique to her.

She knows that’s reciprocated. So – her brows furrow – Lexa must have recognised a change in Clarke. The blonde purses her lips; not now. Almost.

The girls leave the hallway to join the boys in the kitchen. Self-reflective, Clarke barely registers the movement. The deep tones of the men’s voices pull her to her senses. She must remember: she’s the girlfriend of Finn. She needs to act like it.

She’s never wanted to do anything less.

Bottle tops pop. Beers opened, passed around already. Finn is smoking again. Raven and Octavia separate, the former knocking a fist into the latter’s shoulder in response to a quip, to join their boyfriends. Even leaning against the counters, Clarke stays entwined with Lexa, her arm hanging loosely around snug hips while the brunette’s arm hangs luxuriously off the blonde’s shoulder. The denim jacket prevents the boiling world from razing the soft skin beneath. Clarke’s almost thankful.

Finn moves closer to Clarke. Next to her, a jaw clench. Smoke stench. She feels compelled to act like the loyal girlfriend she thinks she should be. Heart steadily rising into her mouth, she keeps it firmly shut as she presses a kiss to his cheek.

Who is she trying to convince? Finn? Herself? Lexa?

Lexa. The name rolls around in her head. Such a glorious name – she’s always thought so.

The blonde slips in and out of conversation. Raven leans her head on Bellamy’s collarbone, and she chuckles her encouragement for him to continue his own tales of his college experience. Clarke joins in when appropriate, listening with ease with to a story she’s had relayed to her at _least_ three times already. Other times, she plunges into difficult thoughts.

She can’t stop looking at Lexa. Her closest friend has always intrigued her, in some way or another; this is deeper, the deepest she’s ever been. It’s only now she’s diving to the deepest level. But to equate _this_ to any metaphor about the darkest depths would be misguided. Inaccurate. Instead of being engulfed by darkness, the world has never been brighter. Light brings life, and together they nurture life in the light; Lexa has her diving into brightness. Slits in the kitchen blinds reflect so much on this enigmatic girl that Clarke wonders for a second if the sight of her best friend will make her blind.

Shampoo and lavender body wash. The paint stain on her top. Yeah, O, _of_ _course_ she remembers that party. Bellamy’s attempt at karaoke was – yeah, what Raven said, like a cat yowling in pain. Unforgettable! Yellow light filters in red and rose.

(She’d like to paint now.)

Maybe not blind, no. She’s surviving, right? Yes, watching Lexa now is painfully sweet. This thing between them, new and old and everything in between – it might save her right now, to look away. But there’s nothing in her that even embraces that thought. All she wants to embrace is _her._

Lexa’s quiet. The brunette’s questions are playfully interrogative, well-aimed, but peppered sparingly throughout the conversation. Clarke’s enthralled.

Those words are dry to the bone. Watercolour without the water. The blonde wants to wet them – and those _lips_ – to feel how Lexa reacts. (To her, beneath her.)

It would take cowardice, not courage, to turn away.

(She wants to _paint._ )

Finn rakes a hand through Clarke’s hair comfortingly, staring at her. She startles, turns to him, at first confused – when she remembers who she’s supposed to be.

The expression on his face is… nice. Complacent, affectionate – she thinks, hopes. She smiles at him, genuinely thankful for the gesture for once, before Raven’s command pulls her thoughts away from her overwhelmed heart.

(A heart that thumps loudly, aching for a boy she can no longer love, and bursting for a girl she now knows she’s loved all her life.)

The temperature rises, and the volume. Light is still bright. Raven’s rallying cry to get into the pool is interrupted by Finn’s sudden, own, outburst. In a manner similar to a sinner bargaining for redemption, Finn lays downs the disappointment from their last baseball game, when Bell obliterated his attempts to win. All he’s asking for a rematch, a way to prove himself to the historian again. What’s a man to do? A chance to snag victory from the jaws of defeat and a chance to show off for his lovely lady – why _wouldn’t_ he take it?

Everyone _oohs_ at Finn’s comment of showing off for Clarke. She’s the only one a little less than enthralled at the challenge. Mostly, she’s just surprised he even cared to remember that baseball game. Besides, there’s really no way Bellamy would say no. Play his favourite sport, show off to Raven and come away with another win under his belt? He must want to be crowing in delight.

Bellamy plays along, his gruff laugh an indication of the beginning of his inebriation. Challenge accepted, and a commanding look from Finn – Clarke’s sent off to procure a baseball and a bat. Grumbling silently to herself, she looks back at the room as she walks out the kitchen.

She’s supposed to be focusing on the big picture: her friends happy, and happy in Finn’s presence. One important part of her life moulding with their old friend, the other part of what she is supposed to cherish most, as best they can after a year apart.

Yet what she sees instead is one thing: Lexa is still quiet.

Agitation, anticipation and bewilderment stir from her heights again. (What is she _doing?_ )

But then Lexa catches her eye, and motions to her beer bottle resting on the side. Does she want one? When she comes back?

She beams and nods, and Lexa goes to fetch one for her from the cooler – but, with two beers in her hand, she stalls. For the quietest second. Clarke can see the cogs working in her brain, can _hear_ the decision Lexa is about to make. Forest green eyes latch onto Finn, but Finn is busy being everyone’s favourite guy, so Lexa grasps the decision to accompany the blonde instead. (As if she would’ve missed the souring of her best friend’s expression after Finn’s silent order.)

It’s not the gesture as such, she reflects as Lexa strides her way – though that is sweet in itself (and typically considerate of the brunette). No, it’s not that. It’s the pull: the gravitational force that wraps around the two of them. This silent acknowledgement that life in each other’s presence is brighter, calmer. It grows; it flourishes. It’s the fact that the brunette is just as receptive to it as she is that makes her unable to hide the grin starting to spread on her face.

It’s the smile that Lexa sends her way when she reads the inevitability being touched on in Clarke’s eyes. Agitation and bewilderment fall away down into darkness for now; her mind is on the duck of Lexa’s head when Clarke thanks the brunette for bringing her a bottle.

Her hands itch with the impossible – to paint this moment. Lexa sees them shaking; the smallest tap on the back of Clarke’s hand, a silent help, a silent reassurance. The calm surges. But the blonde takes it a step further.

When their hands link on the journey to the shed, there is no sense of anything except inevitability.

Certainty is still painted on Lexa’s face when they’re rummaging around. Long fingers wrap tightly around cool half-drunk beer bottles. She clarifies, “Finn knows where these are, doesn’t he?”

Clarke pauses. Takes a breath in the musty, heavy air.

She’s obscured by bikes and DIY tools not used since Jake was alive, but still. She looks up. Finds Lexa’s gaze immediately.

“Yes.”

She knows what sentence Lexa is biting back. She knows that judgement of Finn is being passed. The cardinal rule – broken. But she can’t find it in herself to be angry. She has no reason to. Lexa, once again, is right.

She’s almost ready – but it’s an _almost._ Her courage still falters. Eyes flicker down to lips, but this is not the time. She turns away to trawl through more jagged inconsequence.

She’s not quite there, she knows, but she has that inevitability still prevalent in their proximity. She’ll hold onto that for now.

* * *

 

This place seems eternal. Separated by a substantial wall from their high school, and made difficult to reach by its obscure location, this field seems to have been sliced out of reality and dumped into its own universe with its own set of rules. Only significant things happen here.

She takes this place with her everywhere she goes. Her art room is where confronts what she’s feeling; this field is where she goes to breathe, to pause, to remember herself. Who she is, what’s been done to her and what she’s doing.

Her memories of this place are so vivid, it possess its own importance, its own interpretation, in a corner of her mind she sometimes has to retreat to.

(Her childhood was so _pivotal._ She can’t understand why Finn wants to run away from it.)

She’s not the only one. As they arrive, beer cans clunking and shoes thumping on the dry, dusty land, they quieten for a moment, pausing just to recall the value of this field – to pay it their respects. Clarke herself sifts through the memories.

(She, Lexa and Wells played Princess, Knight and Dragon here, when they were young. She was the knight, Lexa the princess, and Wells was the nicest dragon Clarke had ever come across in all her years of dragon-slaying.

Lexa and Clarke spent time here, the day after Lexa came out to Clarke as gay. The words had been robotic; she’d expected the worst. In this field, Lexa finally, finally shook away any fears of she’d had of Clarke treating her differently, the blonde’s affirmation she could feel through the way Clarke’s hug was tighter than ever.

Only two years later, Clarke had trembled her way through an explanation of bisexuality, and Lexa’s accepting hug had been just as relieving. The day after, they spent their afternoon strolling around this field, hands tightly grasped together and giggling about the people Clarke had liked, and the girl, Costia, Lexa was enamoured with.

Raven and Octavia took Clarke here the afternoon they were told of Jake’s passing. Wrapped in a tight hug, all three of them resolved to keep each other stronger than ever. Feeling the hazy effect of two of her best friends close to her, and the calming effect of the field, she’d tentatively granted Octavia and Raven their special mission: to take her to the art room when she was at her worst.

After numerous attempts to set the two up by their friends, Raven and Bellamy asked each other out, simultaneously, on the hill right over on the far side of the field. Clarke had genuinely shed a tear of joy upon receiving the news.)

This place has shaped them almost as much as they’ve shaped it. Clarke scuffs the toes of her right foot on the baseball post they’d dug into the ground, five years ago, and smiles.

She drapes the tribal-patterned towel around her shoulders, protecting her bare arms from the sun. It’s almost as old as she is; it’s as worn as she is. And it fits. It doesn’t matter that they brought the baseball and bat in this – it’s another level in which she immerses herself with the land underneath her feet.

This is a place of hyper-reality – monumental, removed. Sometimes it’s easy to forget she calls another place in her life her home instead of this plot of land. It’s easy to forget that even this field abides by the rules of linear time.

Raven throws the baseball to Bell and the bat to Finn, who does his best to catch the bludgeoning tool suavely. Lexa snorts, looking to Clarke next to her and sharing a smirk.

Some things just don’t change, she thinks. This will always be them. They are the absolutes in separate words of relativity.

Raven yells, “Cripple privilege! No playing for me!” and instead walks around, confiscating everyone’s bottles of beer. Octavia’s preoccupied with setting up the music and the speaker, so she doesn’t notice when Raven sneaks a couple of sips out of O’s can. Lincoln does, but doesn’t dare protest it or even move from his spot; the Latina is adamant that everybody participates, and that no one refuses to participate except from her.

“It’s conducive,” she says in the way only Raven can, “to seeing Finn get the best sports-related ass-kicking of his life.”

“Love you too,” Finn jokes, and it doesn’t even bother the blonde that he finds it easier to say that word to a girl he doesn’t overly like than to his own girlfriend.

Has he ever truly loved anyone he’s been with? She doesn’t think so.

Her feet stamp the barren land. It’s something to do, something that doesn’t involve looking at her best friend.

Finn smirks at her as they shuffle into position, blowing her a kiss and declaring her his “good luck charm”. Lexa’s eyes slide to the blonde to gauge her reaction – she’s never felt so unlucky.

Is that how she’s come to feel now – the reason for Finn’s misfortune? That’s not right, she chastises herself. He’s nothing to do with her. God, where’s that courageous Clarke she used to know?

No, it must be another form of misfortune. She’s the unlucky one, tied to Finn as she is.

Even Octavia’s helpful decision to play _Eye of the Tiger_ can’t save Finn’s crumbling reputation. What he lacks in aim, he makes up for in power; sometimes he’s blessed with neither. Situated behind him, there’s little she can do, except to shift on her feet and adjust the tribal-patterned towel she’s holding up above her head. More cloth, another layer, but overheating is a small price to pay when she’s at risk of being blinded.

Lexa, positioned on the first post, is as stoic as ever. Occasionally she’ll sweep her air-dried hair away, preventing it from spilling over shoulder, just to allow her skin to breathe. Sometimes she’ll catch Clarke’s eyes, and they’ll share a lull in the game, forgetting the even the field exists.

(When the brunette’s hair dries naturally, the curls become so much more prominent. It’s one of Clarke’s favourite looks. From the pleased little smile gracing the corners of Lexa’s mouth, she figures Lexa’s remembered this little fact.)

Bellamy and Finn alternate their rounds. Abandonments of positions indicate a small break, and a chance to breathe.

Clarke’s fingers drum impatiently on the side of her thigh. Outwardly, they mirror the rhythm of the song from Octavia’s playlist. Inwardly, the dance is to a rhythm she’s only just uncovered; stepping out onto the dancefloor, anticipating putting her faith in an age-old song she’s never danced to before.

Raven hops into view, passing everyone back their beers. (“I _know_ which bottle belongs to who, Octavia, I’m not an idiot.”) She melodramatically wipes Bellamy’s brow for him. It’s the sweetest, goofiest PDA that so characterises them, and Clarke’s heart hurts at how right it is.

(Parallels. They are impossible to bury. She can see the same action, played out with sapphire blue and filigree green—)

The song switches. The blonde is not quite sure how this song managed to make it onto a playlist with _Eye of the Tiger_ , but it doesn’t translate to irritation – the opposite, actually. Memories of nights out and house parties flood her mind, and the way Octavia’s and Raven’s eyes flash with the same sort of glee informs her of their shared elated reminiscence.

Alcohol certainly helps. She suspects the other two girls had a drink before they started their beers at Clarke’s childhood home. They scuttle away from their boyfriends and move over to Clarke and Lexa, chattering about the nights they’ve shared together. The _song_ ; the kickass nights out, the alcohol-fuelled giggles they’d been unable to suppress at their house parties! She’s got to remember!

“Dance with us, Clarke!” Octavia grins, grabbing the blonde’s wrist, head already swaying to the beat.

And – Clarke bites down on her lip – why not? High, drawn-out notes from the electric guitar, warbling synths: they’re an invitation to freedom, the summer she thought she’d have. Slick vocals melt the astonishment coating her heart. Her own voice responds, her feet respond, her body responds. Raven and Octavia laugh in their victory.

Lexa watches.

Choosing to opt out of dancing when sobriety still clutches onto her ankles – that’s very Lexa. To some extent, the steady gaze is characteristic, too: as the sensible best friend, Lexa’s guiding touch always keeps Clarke grounded during the times alcohol tries to push her off the rails.

But Lexa is _watching_ Clarke – and _only_ Clarke. It’s like Raven and Octavia don’t even exist. Two absolutes in a land beyond time, locking onto each other in separate worlds of relativity; Lexa stares, taking in every twist and turn and every flutter of the tribal-patterned towel still braced by Clarke’s outstretched hands.

Eyes finds hers, lock in and shine. Lock in and reveal. Clarke is just as entranced, just as hungry. Bewilderment melts away further to be replaced by something equal parts carnal and pure, equally soft as it is biting. Inhibitions fall away – and, God, all Clarke wants to do is paint the fevered sanctuary she’s found in Lexa’s gaze. All she wants to do is shower herself in it.

The song winds down, decreasing intensity as it jogs towards the finish line. Octavia and Raven materialise again, as does the world. Still giggling and recounting the story of Octavia’s call for body shots that wild night – oh, so _that’s_ why they remember this song so well – Clarke focuses on their voices and blinks herself back into the field. Lincoln gently prises the beer bottle from Octavia’s hand and claps Bellamy on his back in good luck.

Lexa is suddenly preoccupied with anything but Clarke. Breathing heavily, the blonde switches her gaze to Finn. The smarting on his face is undeniable.

There is still a dream-like feel to it, as rooted in the real world as they have suddenly become.

Bell takes his turn. His playing is much better. The game is more exciting, more demanding, than the one before. Clarke actually moves to follow a ball. Yet she’s on autopilot, still.

She can’t watch Lexa not watching.

“That was lesbian activity if ever I saw it,” Raven comments lightly, appearing once again out of nowhere. It jolts Clarke out of her haze.

Tearing her head away from the sight of Lexa’s shoes – away from questioning why Lexa is averting her gaze – the blonde mumbles a simple response. “What?”

“Back then. The dancing,” the Latina clarifies. “She wasn’t _just_ entertained by your half-buzzed dancing, she was _staring._ Clarke, that was one of the gayest things I’ve ever seen.”

Clarke gapes, before pursing her lips. “That’s — why are you suddenly the authority on what’s “lesbian activity” or not?” she fires back, trying desperately to deflect what she’s already hoping for.

The engineer grins. “I’ve had my fair share of experience, Griffin. Didn’t spend junior year of high school with Anya sitting around watching movies, you know?” Clarke cringes at the thought, largely for show, making Raven laugh. “And you’ve had yours too. So, are you gonna explain your complete refusal to acknowledge my observation, or are you gonna leave me to assume you refused it because you _want_ it to be what I know it was?”

“Rae, _don’t_ ,” the blonde growls. She knows it goes unheard.

Bellamy bats again, the last turn for this round. He’s already winning. Raven shrugs, satisfied, and moves away.

She knows she’s confirmed what had previously been just Raven’s observant assumption. With those two words, she may as well have just put it down in writing.

When Raven speaks to her again, it’s to build on that confirmation, simply to pester her some more.

Finn fumbles a shot.

“Your boyfriend’s crap,” the Latina shakes her head with disdain.

Clarke can’t exactly disagree. But, still – “Why do you have to hang around me? I’m meant to be looking out for the ball. Can’t you go back to bugging O?”

“Nah.” Finn’s shot this time is not much better. Raven grimaces. “Shocking. Dump him.”

The blonde sighs. “Don’t judge a guy by his ability to play baseball.” She just wants Raven to leave her alone now.

“I wasn’t.” Infuriatingly, Raven doesn’t care to elaborate, striding off to separate Lincoln and Lexa from chatting and forgetting to participate.

There’s no sense of reproach in Raven’s words, and none of it in her own reaction. She can’t regret the dance – doesn’t. Enlightenment has come with a returning sense of self-confidence. Bewilderment and agitation are being chipped off her shoulders minute by minute, faster still when Lexa finally looks back to her again.

* * *

 

It’s the little moments.

Big moments can’t happen yet, no; not while she’s uncertain whether Lexa feels the same, and certainly not while Finn is in close proximity. But those moments are yet to come, and she’s looking forward to them.

The little moments, though? Clarke _loves_ those.

Two-beer-Clarke is less subtle with her looks than her former sober self. Two-beer-Clarke doesn’t care as much about who knows, as long as it’s not Finn – but God knows everyone else has noticed. She’s 98% certain Lincoln and Lexa had another one of their silent conversations on the way home from the field. Both of them holding other people up, yet still looking up at Clarke like they were the only people present. It was almost rude.

She’s 98% certain because, well, she was there. She was the person on Lexa’s back. (Lexa is easily persuaded, might she add.) Maybe not paying full attention, but she definitely glimpsed their looks to her and it’s enough for her to be almost certain of the conversation topic.

She’s getting tired of almosts.

Octavia, on Lincoln’s back, had front-row tickets to the spectacle of two-beer-Clarke, the Clarke more confident to show how astounded she was by the pealing laugh of the girl beneath her. (Her black-haired best friend was just as subtle as Raven earlier, earning herself a nice little scowl from the blonde.)

So, yes, two-beer-Clarke is not subtle when it comes to her love, and she is wholly appreciative of the little moments. The journey home counts as one of them.

Being treated to a piggyback by her best friend, she’d been dragged away from social interaction by the sight of the nape of Lexa’s neck. Sweat glistening in the summer sun, curled little hairs dressing the skin as if cotton. All of this composition, tiny little brushstrokes to make up a mortal masterpiece. Every piece invaluable, nothing without the other. And, Christ, this was only one small part of Lexa’s body; Clarke was close to speaking in tongues from the sight of it. To say she appreciated it would be to disappoint the depth of the little moment.

Like adjusting the exposure – that seemed truer than ever. Now she wanted more: more light, more everything. She wanted to embrace it.

She’d disguised that want with exhaustion and let out a long sigh – an always-exhalation propelled, unusually, by untruthfulness. She’d rested her head against Lexa’s. Even with the bouncing of the brunette’s feet on the trek home, there was still comfort to be had.

The brunette had turned her head so it leaned into Clarke’s, gifted to the blonde that soft smile reserved for the few but loved by the many.

Two-drink-Lexa smiles more. Clarke loves it.

Even softer were her words. “Nearly home now. Stay with me and we’ll get there, okay?”

Clarke’s had that memory wrapped around every single one of her movements since. Returning with a baseball bat and no baseball – Bell had rocketed that into the school grounds – she’s attempted to claw that memory out of her head. Not because she wants to – God, no – but because she has to.

Soft skin, arms braced around Clarke’s thighs. Hair swept to the side and undulating down one shoulder – little meanders and leaner waves. The cut of her jacket, its pliable form, the contrast between skin and denim.

And the softness of both. The softness of it _all._ Soothing words and a soothing tone, meted out from lungs ready to work for the two of them. Breathing in sync and, even through Clarke’s dishonesty, the soft intentions behind their thoughts.

It’s damn hard to forget a little thing like that.

She knows she must be the doting girlfriend – if not for Finn, then for her friends. Pretences must be Clarke’s forte today; the pretences that she loves Finn instead of Lexa. The inaccuracy of the whole situation is nearly breaking her, but she retains a smile through the whole of it.

It’s hard, it’s so hard it almost dizzies her. She goes from wrapping her arms around Finn’s midriff as a consolation hug for losing against at baseball – to seeing Lexa watch her get changed into her swimsuit.

Finn’s midriff is rock hard and unyielding. His man bun is falling out and he stinks of smoke.

Clarke can see her pink decorations on the mirror Lexa faces. Eyes wandering to Clarke and her bare back, caught red-handed in a little moment Clarke cannot help but acknowledge.

Finn’s smile is victorious – vindictive.

Lexa’s smile is bashful, guilty. Clarke’s smile absolves her of all blame she might be compelled to feel.

(She wants to tell Lexa it’s okay. She wants to tell Lexa it means more to her – but that, she thinks the brunette has figured out.)

Finn walls up his vindication with a cloying claim that regardless of whether he won the baseball game or not, Clarke was the best prize he won all along.

Lexa cannot pass off her look as anything else – laid out to bare in front of them, it’s undeniably what it is and what it’s always been. Instead of suffocation, the thought of it cracks open her ribs to pour out the fire she’s found underneath. The excitement of knowing what that look is, what it means she can _do_ , propels her to dizzying heights of elation—

Then she remembers Finn.

For now, she must settle for being Finn’s girlfriend, choking on his smoke and ash.

But it’s damn hard to avoid the little moments.

Messing around in the pool becomes interrupted by pretences. After splashing each other, Lexa and Clarke share another little moment, a pause, in the time it takes to get their breath back.  Reality is so real that unreality washes over them. It’s like they’re back in the field – a pause in time, and they’re watching each other watch each other. Except this time, they’re suspended in a swimming pool, and the motion of Clarke’s body is not a response to music, but a response to the water nudging confidence back into her being, wave by wave. Again, the world no longer exists.

Hair slicked back with chlorine water and droplets dripping off her nose, her chin. Forest green eyes are the lily pads that so complement the water, and Clarke’s eyes turn to them for understanding.

The brunette is looking back just as intensely. In that little moment, Clarke wonders what she’s thinking of.

Is she thinking of the woman facing her, in tandem with the blonde?

Is she thinking of the fact that she took Clarke’s hand without thought on their way into the pool?

Is she thinking of the enlightenment she’s seen dawn in her best friend’s eyes – the one Clarke recognises is being reflected in filigree green, in wordless gravitational pulls and always-exhalations—?

It only lasts a few seconds. Finn dive-bombs into the pool near the two, earning a few laughs from their friends, and she must pretend again.

She must pretend again.

What she hopes is a temporary presence; pretence is present at the barbecue.

Clarke has no idea how Raven got the barbecue to even work, but as the only person who understands that machine, she refused to let anyone else go near it – except Octavia, who’s cooking far exceeds the others.

(At least the blonde can’t say she’s being a terrible host – rather, an insistent Raven is a Raven best not provoked. Trying to change the minds of Octavia and Raven being stubborn together? Death wish.)

The result is a selection of equally delectable burgers – and Lexa, towelling herself dry by the pool still, while Clarke has gone to collect the food – simply has to try them.

Her feet slap noisily on the patio splattered with chlorine water as she delivers the platter of burgers she’s eager to enjoy, remembering somehow to keep her dripping hair from swinging over the food. Laughing at her friends’ exclamations – she really, really does love having them around – she passes by the relaxing group, lounging around the edge of the pool, patting their heads for fun as she walks past.

They’re too preoccupied to see her reaction to Lexa. Quietly confident in her bikini, methodical in her efforts to dry herself, Lexa is a vision and Clarke is at risk of being blinded again. She swallows down the burning desire to acknowledge it and instead lets her lips clash together excitedly as she rabbits on about Octavia’s miracle cooking.

“As much as I agree, Clarke, my hands are currently preoccupied,” Lexa reminds her drily, encouraging the train of thought that Clarke is desperately trying to distract herself from.

Clarke pushes through, grabbing onto the first thing that comes into her head – just so she can get away from images of hands, Lexa’s hands, Lexa’s hands in other situations— “I’ll just feed you it.”

Truthfully, it’s not the best thing she could’ve conjured. Better than nothing, though.

Lexa chuckles her way through the spectacle, spurred on by two bottles of beer and Clarke’s infectious giggle. The quick-fire, dry joking has returned, too – for a second, Clarke actually considers Lexa’s teasing challenge of stuffing a whole burger into her mouth. The expression of pure pleasure that flashes across the brunette’s face is interrupted by Clarke’s own (very satisfied) laugh.

“What?” Lexa beams at her best friend. “Can a girl not retract her ‘your claim that this is the best burger to exist is likely over-exaggerated’ statement in peace?”

“I mean, I hate to say I told you so—”

“You _love_ to say I told you so.”

“—But I told you so.”

“Y—”

“Don’t get too excited, Lexa, it’s only a burger,” Finn snarks from behind Clarke, his appearance sudden and increasingly unwanted.

The blonde whips around to face him, stunned.

Lexa’s smile slips off her face, and she elects to fold up her towel and place it on the sun lounger beside her.

The blonde frowns at Finn.

He’s wearing a smirk that’s fake for all the wrong reasons. “Just saying. Weird ass aphrodisiac. Sweetheart, can you get me one?”

Little moment interrupted. Confidence fades, and the tight smile returns.

She forces herself to sit on his lap when they’ve all sat down together. She plays the part of the doting girlfriend and pretends that all her attention is not secretly on the girl opposite her.

She pretends that Lexa is not pretending that all her attention is not secretly on Clarke, too. She knows it, can see it, feel her eyes that look away just a millisecond too late to re-join Lincoln’s conversation about the sports club he joined this year.

Two-beer-Clarke is fading, as is two-beer-Lexa, but – for once – sobering up is not as bad as it seems. Nothing’s changed since everything changed: she would love the little moments they share, sober or not, no matter how much alcohol is in her system. What she will always hate is what happens after them: being dragged away from the water, to be reminded of what she forced her reality to be.

Forest green eyes flicker away just another millisecond too late.

* * *

 

Clarke wants to dust rose pink and red over the heavy lids of Lexa’s eyes.

(It’s a sudden thought. It pounds at the heart thudding under her cracked open rib cage, both just as fiery as the lava bursting through.)

It’s so tempting to smooth her fingertips over the slopes of the brunette’s face. Highlighting outlines, letting them blur with all they want for each other. Soft colours on Lexa’s striking features: the Lexa that Clarke knows is the strongest combination of both.

(What the world demands of them is not always who they are. Why does Lexa have to watch as Finn claims Clarke for his own? No one is a prize; everyone’s their own element. You can live alongside them if you understand how.

But also, they must also learn how to live alongside themselves. She’s done well to remember it today.)

Clarke is already painting on her best friend – gloss on plump lips. A unique position. From here, she can see everything: from the cut of her high cheekbones, to the scar on the roll of her chin; freckles adorn the skin, subtle and often covered, but the water has washed any of Lexa’s inhibitions away.

Clarke leans in again to continue applying the lip gloss to that full bottom lip.

She doesn’t know where her friends are right now. Out of the pool, getting changed to enjoy the party indoors, perhaps. Finn is probably getting himself another drink.

In this moment, Clarke could honestly not care less.

There’s another type of painting that Clarke wants to explore – a type of art that requires no paintbrushes or pencils, charcoal or sculpting tools. No – art entirely of their own volition: holy, carnal, pure.

Expressed in evocation and emotion; swollen lips and bitten bruises down the side of straining necks. Hands that soothe can be hands that clench. They’re the cause, the motive, the product and the reaction.

The art is that they give, and give in, and become something new. In constant synthesis, constant unity.

Clarke wants to give, and keep giving. She wants to throw away this damn lip gloss and replace it with her own lips, make art that she experiences instead of appreciating it from afar. She wants to give – as a declaration, as a thank you, as an acknowledgement of what idiots they’d been – so _they_ become the sculptures. No sculpting tools; just themselves.

Their sighs will be the commentary to the art they become: _Synthesis. Clarke Griffin and Alexandria Woods (2017)._ Watch it get rave reviews.

She wants this so much that she can’t help but still with the weight of it. Her gaze flits up from lips to eyes, soft and inviting – to lips – to eyes. Again – again. She wants with all of her. Lexa knows that.

Does she dive in?

The brunette seems just as conflicted. Breaths in sync have frozen in anticipation.

But Clarke _can’t._ She can feel in her bones that they’re in the eye of the storm – this hurricane must be faced, and she can’t do that without knowing the consequences.

She averts her eyes guiltily, and breath stutters to life again; it doesn’t take long for Lexa’s to match hers.

The silence is filled with the words both are aching to say. It’s louder, even, than the air con, and God knows that’s struggling against the burning heat even now. Sweat is starting to pool on the small of her back again.

Soon enough, the thrumming of the air con is replaced by the beginning of more music. A few calls of appreciation sound out, reaching the two girls’ ears at its own leisurely pace. The lethargy of these sensations – the sound, the heat – veil a warning: the world is sure they’ll return to their assigned roles.

That is one world – a world of expectations. The other looks so fondly down on them.

Clarke caps her lip gloss, satisfied with the job she’s completed. “All done. You look stunning.” It comes out as a surprise for both of them, but she’d hardly take it back. It _is_ the truth, after all.

“Thank you.” The words are so quiet the blonde’s not even sure they happened.

She can see the stoicism settle once again into Lexa’s bones. The sudden patience and the stillness of her form – hands folded over her lap – tell Clarke all she needs to know. She knows it for what it is.

(Hard lines not smoothed by the gentleness Lexa holds inside.)

She packs away her lip gloss on her vanity desk, catches sight of her best friend in the mirror. The little moment returns to the forefront of her mind – and she’s gripped with the feeling that Lexa fears this was her one and only chance. Lexa thinks they’ll never have a chance like this again.

No, she can’t let that happen. Clarke refuses to let _them_ become another almost.

She spins around – the force of her hurricane has started to return. With triumphant determination, she assures her best friend, “Next time.”

Forest green widens, but no words come out.

“Next time,” Clarke repeats, for herself as much as it is for Lexa. If she repeats it, she ties herself to it. No wobbling uncertainty in her voice, her actions from now. “It will happen.”

No words, still, but the silent nod is all she needs. Relief washes over her, warm and persistent, and the smile she greets the rest of the group with is totally genuine.

* * *

 

Stomachs are satisfied, full from Octavia’s burgers. Hiding from the Sun, sheltering inside to escape the heat. Somewhat content. Mostly futile, this attempt seems to be – the air con rages against the living light, effected by the hot air it only serves to ferry around. But there is shade, and alcohol, and music, and they are somewhat content.

The singer from the speakers dresses doubts in a smooth mezzo-soprano, a catchy, poppy hook. Then the next song, the same singer. An ode to a girl, her lover; present, but no one in the room stops to comment on it. How apt, Clarke thinks to herself, pushing down a chuckle.

Her legs are underneath the coffee table, but she keeps moving. She shifts from that to another, bringing her knees closer to her chest and planting her feet squarely on the beige wooden floor. Braced. Then moves them.

Tiptoes. Ready to jump. Pale pink pushing against the light flooring, a launch pad of her childhood. She tenses, relaxes.

Lexa pauses in her recollection of her summer stories to take a sip from her red cup.

The temporary break makes the blonde start. The blonde’s eyes jump up, collecting her wits, allowing herself to breathe and remind herself of the relative discretion of their evocation. Art halted, put on pause. Until next time; there _will_ be a next time.

Eyes alight on tawny walls supporting artwork and decorations. If she turns her head, she can look around the room, watch her past play out.

Mementos of their lifetimes: souvenirs brought back from holidays, the times Abby and Jake could tear themselves away from their work and take their daughter around the world. They cluster here, trophies of what her parents worked hard to afford. (Clarke loves them, but can’t feel the same pride in earning them – however much she wishes she could.)

She raises her head, lifts her gaze to beyond the sofa. Up behind Bellamy, where he leans his hand against a wall to talk to Raven, a picture has been hung of the family in Thailand – Clarke was only five. The next trip, when she was ten, to visit Jake’s relatives in Australia: snakes, Aborigine-style, on display next to a gold record of Abby’s favourite band. Clarke’s high school diploma, framed, has the privilege of being shaded by the house plant embellishing the room.

Raven cuts into the conversation before Lexa can continue, offering her own little take on the brunette’s anecdote. The room bursts into laughter – all except for Finn. He grunts. Lexa shuffles in her seat on the couch, moving closer to Lincoln.

Reaching for her own drink this time, Clarke leans forward and captures a bottle in her hands. A chance to breathe, to hold against the tide of lava that spills from her ribcage. For now. But it starts up – again: her eye catches the picture of Clarke and Lexa at twelve. The third of three pictures on top of the television, the blonde had demanded it stayed there, proud of their baby faces and toothy smiles reflecting the excitement they felt on their first camping trip together. The song playing through the speakers breaks into a ceremonious chorus.

What they are both looking for. There was _always_ going to be a next time.

This is what Clarke knows. What she remembers. This place is the Sun; this place has life she cannot let go of. It may not be what she wants forever; it is not her be and end all – next to Lexa on the sofa, Lincoln fans his shirt, creating an air flow on his chest – but it is where she will go from. Where she already _has_. This place shaped her.

Tiptoes. Launch pad.

Clarke turns her head back to her best friend. Lexa finishes her drink, swallows.

Leaning into the coffee table, mirroring the blonde on the other side, Octavia turns her head from grinning at her boyfriend and implores for Lexa to continue relaying all the tales black-haired friend has missed. Lexa can only comply.

Clarke is terrible at subtlety, no matter how hard she tries. She strains her ears for the way Lexa says her words: the poise, the gentleness that strengthens the tone of resolve. She takes in the way the brunette’s head bobs in compliment, the way she listens so intently to the words flying out of Octavia’s mouth. The way her whole body participates.

This warrior of a thousand words; flyaway hairs curl free from her braids, the crown that belongs there. Courageous and patient. She loves, with her whole being.

The way the artist views her, loves with her whole being. Not new, no, but noticeable.

“Of course, Indra _was_ surprised Clarke hadn’t joined us that night. She’s convinced we’re a permanent package deal.” Clarke’s focus centres on this sentence then. Lexa knows it. She catches her best friend’s eye, and the smile they share is both quiet and defiant. Lexa keeps on talking right on through – this is normal, this is _wanted_ – but the blonde still has the click of the ‘ _k_ ’ reverberating through her ears, bouncing off the walls of her lungs.

(She must thank Indra for her sly comments one day.)

Finn catapults himself off from his place on the sofa. It startles Clarke only because she forgot he was there in the first place. Even if he does stink of drink. She can smell him as he prowls past.

She blinks in confusion at his stalking retreat, but she’s grateful for his absence nonetheless. From it arrives an opening.

Not a moment’s hesitation – she’s by Lexa’s side in an instant.

“Isn’t that Indra’s reaction every time you and Griffin are more than three feet away from each other?” Lincoln wonders, faux-innocently.

Octavia snorts. “Honestly? I relate.” She takes a sip of her own drink, looking decidedly smug at her own comment.

Lexa’s responding smirk is everything. If only Octavia knew.

(She can probably guess.)

A huff of disgust claws at their comfort from the opposite side of the room.  Finn. He glares daggers at the two best friends and stomps away, his form fading to the sound of quietening conversation.

“What’s _his_ deal?” Bellamy mutters, just loud enough to hear over the music.

Clarke twists her head in time to see Raven shrug in response, but her eyes land on the two girls huddled closely on the couch. The sliver of trepidation in her gaze confirms it.

Lexa does not watch Raven, but the blonde instead.

Clarke sees her green, then his.

Jealousy has poisoned his every move. They have played right into it – and he has responded so resolutely.

(A baseball game he should not care about.

Dive bombing.

Furtive glances when the two girls are together – victorious smiles when he’s with Clarke.)

She thinks of her readings at school; the words and stories she grew up with. Finn is no virtuous Othello: jealousy makes a fool of the nobles man, but Finn was just a fool for thinking Clarke’s heart could still have room for him.

Maybe Clarke was, too, for believing the same. Once. The pool waits for her. All she needs to do is dive.

Escape the eye of the storm, and dive. At least she is becoming aware of the consequences.

The despite the heat – heat that makes her so agitated, so ready for change – Clarke’s and Lexa’s knees are touching. Always-exhalations hidden by sips of drinks, a new layer of understanding dawning in the girl of sapphire’s eyes.

Lexa’s left hand taps the back of Clarke’s right – weaker hands stronger for it. The blonde’s hand stops tapping, fidgeting she didn’t even know she was doing.

The brunette rises from her seat. Red cup empty. A cursory twist of her head to Lincoln and Octavia, but both are engrossed in conversation with Bellamy. A determination to return to normality after Finn’s transgression; the reaction is not surprising. Clarke sees the recognition of the scene close down Lexa’s proposed question, like closing shutters in the kitchen.

All the poise of a queen – Lexa’s head turns to her, and Clarke is already eager to answer.

“Do you want some?”

Implication is almost explicit at this point. Raven’s attention snaps to Lexa and she grins wickedly at the brunette. Then to the blonde.

(How does Clarke stop herself from saying her obvious confirmation? Unused to putting up a guard against Lexa, reluctant to persist.)

Lexa swallows, startled. “Beer. I mean. I’m going to kitchen.”

The artist tries to emulate her once deep-seated confidence. “Cute.”

Lexa’s acknowledgement of the reference is the smallest little smile, and the duck of her chin. And _that’s_ cute – the bashful embarrassment that Clarke knows wouldn’t exist if both weren’t aware of their intentions.

But images of stolen kisses caught in the kitchen cross her mind. The blonde knows it’s best to delay the inevitable before it inevitably happens.

“Thank you, but I’m good. For now.”

Her best friend nods once, and eyes follow her as she disappears, the smile never fading despite the brunette’s fading presence.

(Clarke imagines another pair, glowering, hazel brown blackening with envy, eyes that follow her as she enters the kitchen.)

The song changes. Something heavier, darker. Clarke doesn’t know it. It’s too much.

Presence can be felt better in absence. She clears her throat and turns her head to the couple next to her on the sofa, but it’s hardly a conversation she can join. Too personal, packed with contexts she can only glimpse through text recollections and second-hand stories.

She imagines that’s how _others_ must feel around her and Lexa – and that truly says something, she thinks, when her first point of comparison is not herself and her boyfriend, but Clarke and _Lexa_.

Absence can be felt better in presence.  Lexa’s return is signalled through Raven’s cheer for more beer – though, as she is _heartbroken_ to discover, not beer for Raven. Lexa apologises and offers her cup to Raven, pointedly ignoring Bellamy’s awe of how easily the cheeky Latina is manipulating her.

Lexa silences his gloating when she reminds him that _he’ll_ be the one taking Raven back later this evening.

Clarke wants to join. She wants to relax with her friends and wash herself in these jokes she’s missed because she’s been too busy trying to hide her burgeoning feelings. Instead of interacting with the people she’s grown up with, she’s been intent on portraying a good girlfriend image; intent on pretending everything wouldn’t be more natural if it was just them without Finn.

She knows, had she not had the relationship with him, the boy would have severed ties with his high school group as soon as he set foot on his university campus. Regardless of his acceptance within the group – how can _they_ possibly benefit _him?_

Her best friend catches her eye, and Clarke swears she’s just read the blonde’s mind. So in sync, in synthesis.

Then her face stiffens to an expression of absolute dread as she looks behind the artist, and Clarke can only think of one explanation—

Rough hands grab at her body, forcing the flesh to stand, to be moulded. The song descends to darker depths – a beat drop – and Clarke’s stomach drops in time to its hammering beat.

She can smell the reek of alcohol on his breath. His hands are too forceful for his sober state. Something deeper, something that thrums in his veins, coarse as the beat drop blasting out of the speakers.

“Dance with me, baby,” he sneers, desperate intent giving edge to the invasive ash-tinged cloud of breath on her neck.

Hands roam where they will, but Clarke hates them, _hates_ them. She can’t show it – why would she make a scene? Everything needs to be fine, they are _fine_ – so she laughs uneasily to reassure her friends. But hands still scrape down her body with imperfect purpose, spurred on by violent emotion, and she tries to shrug them off with as much grace as possible.

God, she wishes this wasn’t happening.

( _Why_ is she letting this happen?)

This doesn’t happen often. Borne out of having too much alcohol, this side of Finn is rarely seen. She has been privy to it before – one too many times when, unusually, he has been left in the hands of his visiting girlfriend. Too-drunk Finn is too much to handle for the completely sober blonde; the drunk version can do little more than get him into bed and run away.

It’s not even just because drunk, angry Finn is scary. It’s because he’s so painstakingly created an image for himself that he unflinchingly sticks to it after he sobers up. He spends the next day denying everything that stumbled form his lips – half the time she thinks she’s just been imagining things.

For all of that, a Finn _this_ far gone is at least mindful of others when he directs his vitriol. But in the here and now, she knows the anger boiling to the surface is different. A wounded anger from falling off his pedestal, a new agitation smothering his ego and running smoke where veins protrude. Clenched arms and outspoken poison – he doesn’t give a damn about the people around them, powerless to stop this horrifying spectacle in front of them.

He looks so _angry._ Hazel turned to black. She _hates_ him, especially, when Finn is this angry.

“Come on, baby, dance with me like you dance with Lexa,” he spits. Her best friend’s name is weaponised in his mouth – all _wrong._ Contempt is so overpowering even the speaker can’t drown it out, and Clarke’s blood boils to new temperatures. “Is this how your girlfriend likes it? Did she tell you she made you her girlfriend? Does she force you like this?”

“Fuck _off_ , Finn!” she tries, finally, smaller than it should be but enough to power her actions. Finally, finally, she shoves him away – hoping against hope that no one has heard Finn’s reviling.

But they have. Of course they have.

Seconds have passed – that’s all. But it’s enough: everyone is silent. Stopped. Shocked. All too much. So overwhelmed, no one dares move for breaking the tentative peace.

Peace not so loved – a peace of fear.

(Dragged out of the pool.  Made a cage, outlines scouring her stomach, waist, hips, ass and thighs.)

Finn scoffs, victorious for now. Moves off to relax in his chair.

But his complacency, that terrible product – it’s enough. The others are awakened into action. Clarke’s eyes, trustworthy now, are pulled towards what she can find safety in – who she has always found safety in. Tightly-wound, hand at risk of crushing the red cup in her grasp, forest green finds sky blue and reaches, always reaches, for the blonde.

“Art room,” Lexa utters. The quietest declaration is the loudest, built on Justice’s undervalued foundations of horror and rage.

Clarke nods, and leaves with her. Not wanting to talk just yet, but reaching out – finding comfort in the always-exhalations they recognise when their hands entwine.

They leave the room to hear it burst into indignation.

* * *

 

“Did you shut the door?”

Lexa meets her eyes for the third time since their escape to the art room. As if her attention hasn’t desperately been on her anyway.

“Yes.” Pause. “You can still hear them.”

“Yeah.”

The Sun has pushed forward since their paint fight. A world ago. Clarke concentrates on that fact, so she can drown out the sound of Finn’s scorned protestations still coming from the living room.

She heard Lincoln’s voice first the just “What the _fuck_ , Finn?” – words the gentle giant prefers not to use.

She heard Octavia’s insistence on seeing Clarke afterward, and Raven assuring her that Clarke and Lexa had it under control.

She heard Finn’s accusations – complacent, still, despite everything. Charm accompanies him on his fall to the bottom.

The door closed then. But she can still hear them. It’s Octavia’s turn now.

“What would help you?”

Clarke’s spent hours – _hours_ – trying to get the right shade of that green. She’s used bottle after bottle to get the hue it becomes shining gloriously in the sunlight – or under strobes, the brunette flitting through the party as a mysterious enchantress. Memory is never as good as the real thing; maybe that’s why the art’s never been perfect enough for her.

Their new art form would get it right, though.

How, how, does she tell Lexa that, when she she’s locked herself in this unsafe banality?

“I can’t do it right now.”

* * *

 

She gazes at the picture of Jake. Peace is etched into every brushstroke. A melancholy kind of peace. She craves that; craves a decisive answer from him. She wants that conviction.

Lexa speaks.

“Draw. Draw what you want. Don’t stick to your assignment – or what you knew.”

Clarke spins around to face her.

There’s a fire in those eyes.

(Can she feed that warmth? Or is she just like Finn – so affected it burns everything, to leave only smoke?

Is she just as bad as him, for staying?

But common sense reacts with revulsion: _God_ , no. Of course not. Clarke knows it’s exactly the sort of thing Lexa would insist on given half the chance – but it does not arrive in the brunette’s voice. No is it justified through her.

No. It is Clarke’s.)

The artist swallows. Lexa’s halfway across the room – space is safe, in the mess this has become – but the words impact her just as hard as if they were exchanged through whispers.

“Think about it, Clarke. Your choice is your own.”

* * *

 

Figures embroiled in light-hearted battle. Paint splatters, and fronds imprinted on a thigh. All around one figure, blue fire. The other embraces a green counterpart.

At least she knows the consequences. But she always did.

* * *

 

Octavia tentatively opens the door to the art room.

“We’re – um – we’re gonna go now. Finn kicked us out, kind of. We needed to get ready for the night out anyway.”

Clarke looks up from her drawing (fire, fire, blue fire), to watch her friend intently.

O’s tiptoed in; she knows she’s trespassing. Necessary, but trespassing nonetheless. Her eyes clock Lexa, how close in proximity the two best friends have become, and lower.

“Bell’s saying we should meet at our house at 7. You guys are welcome to come, if you want. We really hope you do.”

“And Finn?” Lexa’s tone is sharp.

“Not coming.” Unsurprisingly defiant. It’s what Clarke loves about her. “He disinvited himself, annoyingly, before we could disinvite him.”

That makes Clarke smirk. “Good,” she nods. Turning her head to Lexa, she announces, “We should go.”

Octavia grins. “That’s my girl. Knew you’d come round.” The raven-haired girl clears her throat. “For the record, the party was great. Before _that_ , obviously. But it was fun. We should meet up more; I missed you two and your… unique telepathy. Life’s just never the same without you all, you know?”

Yeah, Clarke agrees. She knows that well.

Octavia leaves them with their promise of both having calmed down enough to go out to drink tonight. If she sees Clarke reaching out for Lexa’s hand, she says nothing.

* * *

 

“You need to talk to him. It’s your right and his to know where you two stand. And he has to know that what he did was wrong.”

“I know, Lexa. I want to talk to him. And I definitely will. Right now, I just don’t think he’ll really care.”

Lexa harrumphs. Splays her hand on top of Clarke’s palm. It’s so intimate, the blonde almost wants to cry. _Why_ are they not embracing this? They _should_ embrace this.

She gave Lexa a “next time”. She _will_ deliver on that.

Looking up. The art in the room frames the brunette – a semicircle on the wall opposite them curving above Lexa’s head from this perspective. Lighter colours, a time Clarke took the plunge and became confident in new shades.

Yellows, golds, creams. Light streams in – life streams in – and gold becomes rose gold through tissue paper.

It’s so beautiful. She’s so beautiful.

“Do you really think he’ll care?” she reiterates. Her voice has become a whisper now. But it doesn’t need to be loud to be confident. She’s sure in the vision before her – a vision of reality, of strength in each other. Hanging onto every word, knowing the comfort found in each syllable – even if the topic itself is harder to swallow.

The calmness roars in her ears. This is life.

Lexa’s mannerisms are not overt – but she does stare into distant lands, and from that the blonde knows she’s considering the words that so securely left her best friend’s mouth.

“It depends on who’s being hurt. Him, or you.”

With her free hand, Clarke rubs at a recent paint stain in the carpet. It only spreads the paint further, and she does not mind that.

“And he _is_. When I talk to him, he will be hurt. You saw what happened earlier; he’ll react. It’s hard to deal with that, Lex. Sometimes I doubt if I can. What if I find all my confidence has been drained?”

What she does not expect is the wry smile her best friend offers.

“Clarke, don’t believe for a second that you could ever lose that hurricane inside of you.”

* * *

 

She sits by the pool, eyes forward and focused. Her legs are embraced by the water: at first bracing, but she quickly settles. Legs suspended in motion, she is on the edge of diving – further, further, brighter. Sometime before, she would’ve been scared of it, worried she’d just fizzle out to become smoke.

But watch her ignite underwater – the true test of endurance.

She remembers sitting by the side of the pool only a few hours ago. Restless, despondent, stifled. Heat was oppressive then, spurred on by Finn’s insensitivity. Now a different kind of heat consumes her; a new kind. Fire that pours through her lungs: she made a promise to herself, to Lexa, to embrace it, and to never be as suffocating as smoke. To live like that would be damning. She’s seen what it’s done. Tobacco stains make a cage of a person.

A deep breath. She looks up, temporarily. It’s the hottest hour of the day, and in the air hangs a heavy suspense. The trees do not sway, but they stand tall. Most birds rest.

But one sings, it sings for her.

Outlines on her body, the oppressive heat. They are paint splatters where outlines blur, and they have made their own warmth. That lone bird pours its heart out, and so must she.

Lexa was right. Of course. Clarke never lost her confidence. It’s more so that it became dormant – at least, the confidence she wanted to see. Expectations and banality had so panicked her that Clarke had forgotten who she was. Temporarily.

But she thinks of their time in the field earlier, their time painting nails and applying lip gloss – and she knows she’d been regaining herself.

She’d just lost sight of herself. But, think of it: music, dancing, a love for her friends, in a home from home. In the application, an unapologetic embrace of herself: dedication, sexuality, desires that she uncovered despite even the lock and key of imposed banality. This was her, all along; determination to be herself despite following it up with a fear of repercussions.

She’d been so scared, restricted by herself, she was unable to see that she’d been rebelling against that all along. A gentle coaxing, it became; hands cusped over what she’s meant to be, encouragement felt through realisations and eye contact and reflection over what she really wanted.

It was not Lexa who promised, “Next time,” but Clarke.

(It delights her to no end that Lexa’s description of Clarke is truer more than ever now. She’s not a tsunami, caused by others. She’s a force of nature, because of herself, _in spite of herself_. She has always been the hurricane.)

They were so _obvious_. She knows that now. Forced by circumstances to not act on it quite yet, but still so obvious for it. Prolonged stares and silent conversations – their “unique telepathy”. How did she think they could be discreet? How did she think this would be anything but certain?

Things are different, now. Her friends have returned to their homes, safe in the certainty of tonight. Clarke is safe in her own eventuality: she _must_ talk to Finn. She hates the idea, _hates_ it, but it’s the right thing to do – the only thing to do about him. A fall from his pedestal is not enough if he believes there’s still a way to go.

She looks back towards the house; the closed patio door and the glimpse of the chair just inside the living room. Finn’s asleep there. Completely unawares. She tiptoed past him on her way here – pushed down the feeling of revulsion from remembering, set her jaw, and sat out here to think. To think, and to embrace. To embrace everything but him.

There’s comfort in knowing how he’s going to react to that final push; at least Clarke can prepare herself for it, and move on.

She doesn’t think she’ll miss him, not now that she sees him for who is: a master manipulator, hiding behind a façade of charm.

No, wait. She lowers her head to watch the water, frowns. An _ex-Romeo_ ; that might be a better description. He’s not caught up with the people around him, thinks they’re there for his benefit without ever having to say it. But façades never work. That she knows all too well. Today she throws off the mask of her dead love for him.

Dusting kisses on the lines of Lexa’s being sounds better in conviction than it does in almosts and maybes, than in not right nows. The assured promise that synthesis can be as soft as it can be demanding is a promise to herself as well as Lexa: a promise that things _will_ be different, now she’s determined to dive.

She remembers watching the swirling patterns of filigree green and sapphire blue. Inevitable from then on. But now she _knows_ she won’t run from it. That’s the difference. In spite of and to spite any repercussions, and to embrace any futures she finds with them. These are the consequences she has always known.

She wants to act on them now. That’s the difference.

She hears but doesn’t watch her best friend approach the swimming pool. Lexa sits there, next to her. Legs dipping into the water, hands flat on the tiles in solidarity – and just for a second, apprehensive giddiness surges back to the forefront. Eyes down on the water, she doesn’t watch the precise placing of palm, nor the bob of her throat as the brunette swallows.

It’s clear to the both of them that this is their “next time”.

They have the perfect opportunity: Finn is asleep, and they are alone. They have acknowledged this, silently; this mutual desire to bridge the gap between best friends and something very much _more_. All they need to do is dive.

It requires conviction. A confidence, at first, Clarke wasn’t sure she had. Determination she was sure she’d forgotten.

It takes her a moment.

Lexa doesn’t make much noise. No words. No eye contact. Just a simple gesture of being there. The brunette knows what the artist must be hurtling through her best friend’s head right now, and, instead, allows time to breathe.

The blonde turns to look at her, taking in the top still splattered with paint, the short-enough shorts and the denim jacket draped over her shoulders like a thick cape, and takes a breath.

Because that’s the thing: confidence can be found in staying by someone’s side – or, yet, choosing to be there. Confidence can be knowing when to hold back and when to take action. Confidence can be all these things and more; it doesn’t have to manifest in reaching out and kissing someone.

Sometimes, though, it can.

Clarke inches her body closer, until there are only gaps of space left – the flashes of white wall between the shapes Clarke poured her heart into in a room of her childhood home. She rests her head on Lexa’s shoulder, and blonde hair spreads onto rough blue like knocked-over paint. Lexa ducks her head towards her best friend.

The smallest nudge of her nose into the crevices of Lexa’s neck.

Turn to me. This is happening. We can make this happen. Turn to me.

Lexa does.

Clarke lifts her head. Centimetres apart. They are so close.

She wants to dust the shapes of Lexa’s face with red and rose. Pink and ruby blossom where their gazes linger, art made life and life celebrated in art. Experience, embrace. Lexa’s forest green gaze traverses down to Clarke’s lips and this – this is the call they have been waiting for. The time to dive.

And they dive.—

She hits water, but it is cold, _cold_ , and that means Lexa is suddenly not _there_ , and, fuck, is that Finn’s voice she can hear? Rough hands clamp around her arm and drag her up onto her feet. Fuck, Finn was supposed to be _asleep_ – she was going to bring him down _later_ – how did he get here so quick? Where is Lexa?!

Dragged out of the pool, Lexa’s head slammed against the rocks of the flower display parallel to the pool. Clarke’s stomach plummet and this is what it feels like to drown; she cannot think of what to say, a single think to say against the onslaught of bile barraging out of Finn’s mouth.

 _Lexa!_ Her thoughts are Lexa – her safety, her comfort – how could Clarke let that fall to the wayside?

“—Of all people,” he hisses, spits, rages. “ _Her_?!”

He spit the word out like Lexa is poison, burning everything she touches. (But no – not her – not Clarke – Finn was too weak to fight against this—)

She wants to reach out to Lexa – turned over, still sprawled on the ground – the blood, the bruising, _she’s_ done this – but Finn hunches over and jams his face into her breathing space. His face contorts, a grotesque reimagining of the boy she once loved. Puppy face boy has turned into the aggressor, rabid in snarling his wounded pride. Too close, too destructive, he rages.

“Don’t even try to defend yourself in front of me—”

Cowed by him. She can’t say a damn word. She can’t get to Lexa – oh, God—

“Keep your mouth _shut!_ You’ve done enough already.”

She’s never seen Finn like this before. This is worse than what she’s known – because she’s never had to know this. This is the final fall, and Finn is lashing out. God, she needs to know if Lexa’s okay. What if she needs the hospital? While Finn ignores her and _screams!_

“ _Look at me!_ ” he screeches, and she cannot regret anything but this boy, this boy whose only defence is attack. His last resort, the only resort – she hates him – she hates him for it. He is screaming in her face and it hurts like hell – but it’s nothing compared to locking eyes with Lexa and seeing the physical harm of the mess Clarke has put them in.

“How _dare_ you do this to me?! What do you—”

Then he falls, felled. Something primal has awoken in Lexa – burning, burning warrior. First the brunette knocks him down, then unleashes years and years of frustrations onto this boy. School years spent watching the blonde try to appease her boyfriend in the littlest of ways – and the biggest; seeing him take her for granted – days of silent misery, the burden of a dying love taking its toll on the blonde through listless afternoons in college – where Lexa can’t help. Tucked away irritation – it bursts out of this burning warrior in a fury of constant justification. Clarke can only watch; she sees it all. The built-up resentment is shot out of Lexa’s system with every hit Finn takes.

But that’s not – this isn’t how it’s meant to go. Clarke jumps into motion and rushes forward, slipping hands around Lexa’s waist, hauling her up and away. Finn groans, man bun askew and skin bruised and sore – but Clarke doesn’t take another look at him, doesn’t give him a second thought. Her focus is on Lexa, on calming her down, making sure she’s okay. God, she wants Lexa to be okay.

They are both trembling. Adrenaline rockets through their systems. Everything is hyperreal now, the truth of the day shining down. It both burns and warms them. Trembling, in its full light, they can do little more than hold each other, confirm with once-overs that both girls are alright.

Trembling, shaken, half-words leave their lips and nods take the place of verbal answers. Lexa’s lip is bleeding, ruby red and raw. Real. Clarke cups the brunette’s face, brings a thumb over the wound, and her caress sees a smudge of red follow.

She’ll never let anything like that happen to Lexa, never again. They will never be out of control again. They are theirs, and theirs alone, from now on.

Clarke almost hears the same words spoken in her best friend’s head. They are on the same page; finally, as they always should have been.

Lexa swallows. Takes a breath. And the dive this time is not interrupted.

Light storms through their veins like they are set alight, as their lips finally touch in a kiss long overdue. One time is not enough – each is an embrace, a thank you, an apology, a chance for devotion. The sigh she feels from the brunette is what Clarke should’ve known she’d been craving for years; their hug afterward even more so.

It’s a beautiful revelation. Clarke latches on tighter to Lexa, a promise that she won’t let go, and she feels her world has righted itself.

They have changed everything, by embracing everything about themselves. Everything make sense again, from that leap of faith she finally made.

* * *

 

Their summer restarts. Weeks of stifling inconsequence are replaced by days brimming with elation – whether they do little, do much, or do nothing at all.

Their new chapter is the healing, the happening. Clarke rids herself of Finn, as much as she can: his presence, his belongings, and sweeps out any consideration of him from the corners of her mind. After she drove him home in his truck and chucked a packet of aspirin at him; after he came round, stiff and sore, to collect his stuff; after all of his attempts to nurse his wounded pride, he’s more little more than an afterthought. Or, to be generous, a catalyst for her growth, in the way a garden looks infinitely better when the weeds have been dealt with.

He’s spotted around Clarke’s childhood home, though, if a guest looks hard enough. A few group photos – a group he’s no longer welcome to – and the blackened space on the outdoor table are the only reminders left. But his clothes are gone; his cigarette packs have been thrown in the bin. The yellow of the house is the sun shining through open windows and through blinds, and there are no signs of tobacco stains now.

Without him, days vary in pace, each one memorable. The first few are epitomised by the healing, by the promises to stay overnight and handle each other with care. Clarke doesn’t let Lexa go home until she’s sat and had her wounds cleaned, although first aid sessions quickly turn into make out sessions instead. They call a rain check on the night out with friends, and Lexa cycles home to retrieve overnight clothes so they can spend the next two or three hours completely forgetting that the outside world still exists.

The days after the healing, then, come the happenings. Gatherings with their friends are more frequent. Wilder. Freer. Dressed up to dance – or, at least, look good watching others dance – the blonde knows it’s been a long time coming: gazing lovingly at the mysterious enchantress under moonlight, laughing with Raven and Octavia about how blind she’d been and drunkenly challenging Lincoln to an arm wrestle. Drinking too much and sometimes not enough, waking up with memories of letting go to share as she cuddles up to Lexa under old bed sheets.

Days vary in pace, and sometimes the days they don’t go out are the best days they have. Readings from college take up their afternoons, spent either laid out on the sun loungers or on Clarke’s bed with legs entwined. If not academic books, then other things fill their time: favourite shared novels, horror movies Lexa comforts the blonde through, games and conversations and cementations of the bond they’ve shared since elementary school. Sometimes they’ll have dinner with either girl’s parents – an old tradition recycled with secret hand-holding under the table and light exclamations of, “ _Finally!_ We’ve been waiting for this for years!”

Clarke’s art bursts into life in a way she’s never experienced before. Emerald green entered her life long ago, but now it shines with purples, pinks and reds. New colours, new blends, new blurs; she finds herself drawing, doodling, sculpting on any surface she can find. Images fill her blood with a new lease of life.

(She paints a diver jumping into depths unknown. Not black, not white, not anything the diver could guess: flowers bloom on the tiled pool floor and, entranced, the person dives to smell the roses.)

As her art flourishes, Clarke and Lexa do, too. Synthesis is better when experienced, Clarke is glad to confirm: their sculpture is more breathtaking than even she could’ve predicted. The meshing of colours and tumbling of sounds out of open mouths – it’s what they have been waiting for, depriving themselves of no longer. This invisible paint to accompany the visible colours Clarke has smoothed onto the brunette’s back; Lexa’s whispered sweet nothings to bring to life thoughts they had dared not think: they are the sculpture, and Clarke has never enjoyed art as wonderful as this.

Their summer passes, not as a necessary in-between, but as a celebration. Of themselves. Of their choices. Despite the heat of a world that refused to want them, they right the world through recognising themselves.

Clarke thinks on this as she lies with Lexa one evening. She hears their hearts beat to the sound of a summer pop song from playing from a phone somewhere: she recognises the singer, her ode to a sapphic type of love. Her heartbeat picks up when Lexa opens her eyes again; green alights on blue and the sight of it – even the sight of it – compels the blonde to smile.

“What are you thinking?” the brunette wonders, a hooded gaze soft as velvet. As if Lexa doesn’t know.

In lieu of an answer, Clarke drapes a finger across her girlfriend’s face. Her fingers touch where scrapes were: above the arch on an eyebrow, on the cut of a sharp cheekbone, the bow of a bottom lip. Ruby red patterns that have faded, but will always mean something to them.

But she speaks anyway.

“I was thinking – we held on,” the blonde answers, finally. Quietly. Always enough.

To have taken that opportunity, and to have dived – that, Clarke knows, is what it means to hold on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for taking the time to read my work. Please hop on over to paintedviolet.tumblr.com if you want to talk!


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